Portales Dental Saves Thousands by Moving to Ascend’s All-in-One System

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Challenge

The team at Portales Dental had been using Eaglesoft for more than two decades when they decided they needed a change. After switching to CareStack and then Curve, both of which had strong demos but caused significant issues in their office, they realized they needed a new solution.

Solution

Knowing they needed a cloud-based practice management solution (PMS), Ascend seemed like the natural next step, and the team has been happy with the decision.

“CareStack looked good. The marketing materials made it look like they had all the bells and whistles, but once we got in it, it didn't work as intended. Curve was very, very simple to use. I mean, it's the kindergarten of dental software. After going from Eaglesoft to CareStack to Curve and now to Ascend, hopefully we stay until he retires, because I don't want to do this again.”

-- Deb Portales, Owner and Office Manager, Portales Dental

Results

Thousands in savings with a single solution

Thanks to the all-in-one capabilities of Ascend, the office was able to get rid of Pearl, Bola, Next Health, and IA Plus.

“I probably got rid of almost $1000 worth of add-ons when we went to Ascend. To have a software like Ascend and not utilize all the services within it is asinine to me. Why wouldn't you use every single module and make it work for you and not make more work for you? I mean, that's the whole idea of having it is to save time and workflow.”

-- Deb Portales, Owner and Office Manager, Portales Dental

Hours saved with Eligibility Pro

Eligibility Pro has helped Portales Dental streamline one of the most time-consuming parts of the front office workflow: verifying patient benefits before appointments. Instead of relying on a separate solution, the team can now use Ascend to quickly see whether patients are eligible, review benefit details, and identify important limitations or exclusions before the patient arrives.

That visibility is especially valuable for an out-of-network practice, where accurate benefit information helps the team prepare for conversations around copays, downgrades, and alternative benefits. By bringing that information directly into Ascend, Eligibility Pro has helped reduce manual work while giving the team clearer, more actionable details upfront.

“Eligibility Pro saves us hours. I was able to cancel our other solution because Ascend did all of that and did it better. It's been such a huge help to be able to look at the schedule and see exactly if patients are eligible, what their benefits are, and what limitations or exclusions apply.”

-- Deb Portales, Owner and Office Manager, Portales Dental

Patient payments made quicker

Ascend Pay has helped Portales Dental make patient payments easier to collect and faster to process. With text-to-pay and website payment options built into the workflow, patients have a more convenient way to pay after statements are sent, while the team spends less time manually following up or processing payments separately.

“I can highly recommend Ascend Pay. If we send out statements, I'd say 80% of people use text-to-pay. We were always about 45 days out on AR, but now it's probably more like 30 days. We just started generating statements daily, and that's been huge for us — one of those quality-of-life hacks where I'm like, ‘Oh my gosh, that makes so much sense. Why didn't I think about it?’”

-- Deb Portales, Owner and Office Manager, Portales Dental

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